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Detroit Free Press – July 5, 2006
Probes of links to Hizballah grow
Focus on group concerns some local Muslims
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO
Inside the Dearborn banquet hall, Lebanese Americans gazed at flat-screen televisions that flashed video footage of armed Hizballah fighters battling Israelis in Lebanon.
The mostly Muslim crowd was there to celebrate Lebanon Liberation Day, the sixth anniversary of the Israeli army's departure from southern Lebanon on May 25, 2000. To those inside the hall, Hizballah is a heroic group responsible for ending Israel's occupation of the towns where they grew up.
But to the U.S. government, Hizballah is an Iranian-backed terrorist organization that has killed more Americans than any militant group besides Al Qaeda.
The clashing views of Muslims and U.S. authorities over Hizballah are playing out in southeastern Michigan as federal investigators increasingly target local residents purported to have ties to the group.
Prosecutors have tried to link at least 29 metro Detroit men with Hizballah over the past three years, according to a review of court records and interviews with attorneys. About half the men were accused of the links in criminal cases over the past three months, including the owner of the La Shish restaurants, Talal Chahine.
The FBI in Detroit says Hizballah has a presence in Michigan, and the bureau has set up a division to investigate the Shi'ite Muslim group. In recent cases, federal agents are looking at ties to Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Shi'ite Muslim cleric in Lebanon who the U.S. government says is a Hizballah leader. The FBI in Detroit also has divisions that investigate Hamas and Al Qaeda, but those terrorist groups are not cited as often as Hizballah in local cases.
"We direct a fair amount of resources to investigating" Hizballah, said Daniel Roberts, special agent in charge of the FBI's Detroit office. "We have an entire squad of agents and police officers who are focused solely on the Hizballah terrorist organization here in Michigan."
And with good reason, he says. The Lebanon-based group is blamed for the suicide bombings of the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon and an attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 U.S. service members 23 years ago. On June 22, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, said Hizballah is training terrorists inside Iraq.
All this focus on Hizballah has made some local Muslims anxious. Some Shi'ite Muslims in metro Detroit have met Fadlallah, and others grew up with him. A few say they fondly recall a talk he gave in Southfield in 1981. In previous years, some waved Hizballah flags in public.
They now say they are miffed that prosecutors are trying to link Chahine with Hizballah through Fadlallah, a man they say is not tied to the militant group. In August 2002, Chahine spoke at a fund-raiser in Lebanon and met with Fadlallah.
Chahine, 51, of Dearborn Heights was charged in May with tax evasion, but prosecutors later linked him to Hizballah in court documents, partly based on that meeting.
Chahine maintains that he was at the fund-raiser for Al-Mabarrat, a charity led by Fadlallah that has an office in Dearborn and is licensed to operate by the U.S. government. Many Muslims in the region have donated to Al-Mabarrat. An employee at its Dearborn office said last week she could not comment.
The FBI's Roberts said anyone with links to Fadlallah is of interest, but he added that the bureau is not going after everyone who has met the cleric. "It goes deeper than just a casual meeting," Roberts said in May.
But to some local attorneys who often represent Arab Americans, what's happening to Chahine fits a pattern.
When Arab Americans commit a crime, terrorism charges often are alleged in later court filings, said Dearborn Heights attorney Nabih Ayad, who has had clients linked to Hizballah. One of Ayad's former clients, Mahmoud Youssef Kourani, was sentenced in June 2005 to 4 1/2 years in prison for raising money for Hizballah inside his Dearborn home. Kourani, 35, is one of two people the U.S. Department of Justice has convicted for financing Hizballah, a federal crime………
http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060705/NEWS05/607050353
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